Falling: A Beginner's Guide

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The Scene: The International Space Station,
some years from now.
On board, ace Cosmonaut Sergei Tereshkov. For a day and a night he
has fought to save the crippled station as it circles down toward the
Earth's atmosphere, but now he must admit defeat. Already the wispy
tendrils of the Earth's atmosphere are reaching out to grasp Alpha's
steel skeleton. Soon she will plunge Earthward.

*Cosmonaut is a prestige class similar to the
standard Astronaut prestige class, but with additional munchkin
features added.

He must leave. But there is one problem. His
Soyuz lifeboat
departed two days ago with his remaining crew mates. He's taking this
ride on his own. He gets into his space suit, enters the air lock,
and pushes himself away.

At 75 miles of altitude, somewhere above West
Africa, Sergei
begins to feel the tug of the atmosphere. At a speed of 18,000 miles
per hour, he re-enters, and begins his long fall to Earth. A few
minutes later he blazes a trail over Greece, still moving at more
then 5000 miles per hour.

He sails over the Kazakh desert at a thousand
miles per hour,
decelerating all the while in long lazy arcing swoops. Within
minutes, with his arms and legs spread to generate the maximum drag,
he has slowed to around 120 miles per hour and is preparing to make
his final landing.

He falls toward the ground, hits, rolls,
bounces, and skids to a
halt in the desert sands, bruised, battered, but very much alive. He
gets up, and begins to walk toward to the sound of the arriving
rescue helicopter.

Calculating PCFS

Okay, so Sergei survived, but would you? Well it
all depends on your
PCFS. Here's how to calculate it, and be warned, there is a certain
amount of mathematics here.

Disclaimer:- I don't understand any of the
maths, so I can't
guarantee any of it. If you hurl your PC off a cliff and he ends up a
blob of strawberry jam, don't come blaming me. And given that I don't
understand the maths and not_cub doesn't know the gaming system, the
potential for a fuck-up is quite high.

Firstly, you will need to know:

H which is your number of hit points.
S which is your fortitude saving throw.

Now there are two formulas, depending on whether you have more than
50 hit points.

If you have more than 50 hit points then the formula is:

PCFS = 100 - (f(H) + (f(50) - f(H)) * (14-S) / 20) * 100

But if your hitpoints are less than or equal to 50 points then the
formula is:

PCFS = 100 - f(H) * 100

At this point, you will of course be asking: "What the fuck* is f?"

* Feel free to insert a culturally appropriate expletive here.

Don't panic. "f" is simply a lookup table. So if you need to work out
say "f(29)" you find the row which has 29 in the left-hand column,
and take the value that is in the right-hand column. For values of
less than 25, you the value for 25 (1.0) and for values of greater
than 120, use the value for 120 (0).